


see a man about a dog.

by fairygloss



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, courier's name is bishop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-19 03:53:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29868726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairygloss/pseuds/fairygloss
Summary: Oh, to be in love, to be incapable of love, to approximate love with your red, evil, heart. To chase a man across the desert.
Relationships: Courier/Vulpes Inculta
Kudos: 4





	see a man about a dog.

Once he thought there was a difference between a gun and a pneumatic gauntlet. That he could outrun the fist, not the gun, that it was only with a bullet that he would meet his match. Benny, or what Benny could do, had been his worst fear, and he was sure, after they took that bag over his head he’d die. But now he had met his match, maybe finally, really. Steam clouded every part of his eyes, or it was a heat mirage, but the men around him were blurred. He could hear the loud but the specific words swam in a patchwork garble. They’d hit him hard.  
His hand felt bloated, double the size. Like he had lead for fingernails. It came away red. The very tips of his fingers daubed with thin, dark, red. Paint.  
One of the men above laughing. Hyena. The sky is pure pale blue. No weather, just empty. In Zion he felt ready to die again, for a second time, sure that he could. Amidst all that beauty. Now, he’s met his match but there’s not a single part of him that wants an end, can really foresee it in this shitty dry place. The pneumatic gauntlet creaks, but he sees it move first. The sound is so slow.

The man shaped blur got bigger then it jerked, danced. A fountain of red blood marked the air, stayed, even after some splattered on Bishop’s face and on the dead man’s. In the dirt, Bishop saw his red armor, the skirt, the rusty X.

Two more bullets. The others twitched and danced and fell. Some booted feet- tan pants and sniper gear. His lucky pair. A stoic Boone, and a panicked-looking Arcade.  
“You really didn’t hear them coming?” Arcade already got his fingers down his collar. For what, a pulse? Hey doc, my head’s up here. It’s the broken thing. The fingers were pleasurable. Cool. An oasis on skin.

He remembered trying to shut his eyes, but they were stuck, gritty, or just dry. The world disappeared for just an instant, and when it came back it was night. There was a thick blanket. Someone had wedged a hot cup of something in his hands. His head hurt. Like a tumor had grown in the top right part when he wasn’t paying attention.  
A solitary place, by the campfire. Out in front as the lake, miles of cool water. He could smell the difference between this and irradiated. This was the best souvenir of the old world, the smell of clean water. He knew the spot. Behind him was the severed trailers with the friendly mattresses inside.  
How long had Boone and Arcade slogged through the desert? Who’d propped him up by the fire? Who’d made the drink?  
What had he said? To be the drop that hollows the stone. Not by force, but constant dripping. Vulpes Inculta was determined to be a thorn in an enemy’s side, a constant buzzing in their skin, until he pierced an organ or shook them apart, all in the name of Caesar.  
The rest of the Legion had passionate faces. Passionate, or desperate. Very righteous. The NCR was similar, but more tired.  
At Helios, the brotherhood lost. Despite skill and technological superiority. Simple numbers, simple bodies.

Vulpes Inculta had a very calm face. Comparing him an insect was complimentary. They were similar.  
On the shore, miles away from memory, he found something to smoke. The sky was remote, too, full of thousands of beautiful things. The lake lapped. It was a beautiful night to survive assasination. But he flicked a switch on his pistol. He couldn’t tell if the tumor was shrinking or not.  
The smoke wasn’t tobacco. He began to feel alarmingly spread out, like a puddle of goo shifting inside a skin. It didn’t ease the pain exactly but at least competed with the sensation.  
They beat them in the Legion. Vulpes had scars most everywhere. Not always deep, but some were. Bishop much preferred the life of a hitman, a sniper, to kill without being touched.

“So you let them.”  
“They hardly do it in front of me.” Vulpes said. That face.  
“So you hardly stop them.” He’d been about to kill Vulpes, but Vulpes stared him down. He’d almost took a page from Boone’s book. They were at a bar, drinking whiskey. Well, Bishop sipped it, but Vulpes left it sitting. Did a frumentarii ever drink it, or did he find a table to give it to by the night’s end, or did it end up splashed on the concrete?  
In a brown suit and plain hat he was infuriatingly disguised. Except he didn’t try as hard with Bishop. They could recognize each other’s kind. Well, partly. Partial kinship. He wasn’t as bad as Vulpes. Feeling still snuck its way in, if only in intensities.  
He had no idea if Vulpes was like that.  
Vulpes looked solemn. “You would have me invoke the wrath of Caesar?” Like he cared to have his men stop, but he was weak, powerless, afraid of big daddy Caesar, megalomaniac of the East. In his eyes- the great amusement, of playing the game, and thinking he could be winning. Or maybe that was just Bishop. Inculta was something else. Not amusement, but the pinch at the corner of his eyes. Inculta couldn’t hide his disgust. The disparagement. Bishop took his drink and downed it too. And they left without killing each other.

He was solicited in Vegas, outside of Gomorrah. A clean Omerta, who offered him a heavy bag of caps, who had a pretty face too. Just like Reno. He had to find those tapes.  
“I’ll be back.” He clapped Arcade on the shoulder. Veronica looked vastly entertained. Boone, vastly unsurprised.

When they got to the hotel, the man began with his own jacket. Lithe arms with some dark moles. A few scars. It was hard to get better.  
“A casino full of people you can pay for sex, and you call me off the street?”  
“I couldn’t resist,” the man said. Bishop stepped closer and directed the man’s hands to his belt- who froze.  
“It’s your job to undo them,” Bishop said.

The weight in Bishop’s throat was pleasant. Pleasurable, to feel the soft head on his tongue, to do a good job and lick it. The man exhaled, long and hard, and gripped Bishop’s shoulders. He pulled off and kissed the inside of the man’s thigh. The man’s hips rocked forward. It left a sticky trail on Bishop’s face, precome and spit.  
“Fuck,” the man whispered. He was all red. Bishop smiled widely, and stayed on his knees and let the man rock against his face, put up a hand to play with his dick until the guy came with hot sticky spurts all over him. Bishop fingered his ass and fucked him without wiping it off. They did it against the wall. The man kept clutching at him and groaning as Bishop fucked him and Bishop didn’t stop until he came in the man’s ass, and Bishop then masurbated into the man’s mouth, and made him swallow it.  
The pair fell asleep together, frumentarius.

“Ah.” Vulpes said. The legionnaire looked red, and afraid, burnt like a pyre by embarrassment. “Nothing else to report?”  
“No, sir.”  
Vulpes dismissed him. There was no reason to emphasize confidentiality. Other frumentarii cut out tongues.  
He would ask him next time. Are you a whore? He had gone, rather come, without fuss, so not blackmail. He’d been observed fucking the man with apparent enthusiasm. A whore. A man who fucked men.  
The East was loud. There was some battle at the arena. The swords rang from the arena. Some gladiator and a prime. The roars were ferocious. He waited until he could see no booted feet beyond the gap at the bottom of the tent, till he was sure they’d migrated to the arena for the battle. Then Vulpes reached into his skirt and stroked himself.

Boone emerged from the bus by the time he was almost finished with this smoke. He crouched by the fire and said nothing.  
“Tomorrow, I want to go to Nelson,” Bishop said.  
Boone grunted. Affirmation, probably. Bishop appreciated a man of few words.  
“I want,” Bishop said, “to kill a bunch of legionnaires. No point in waiting. Nothing worth gaining anymore.”  
“This should have happened a long time ago.”  
Another thing he liked about Boone. He didn’t shy away.  
“Not a proponent of the long game?”  
“Not a proponent of not killing any legion we see.”  
“You give me shit like Raul does now. Will I travel with two assholes?” He wanted to get up but the blanket struggled against him. Boone hauled him up.  
On someone’s shoulder, the stars didn’t look brighter, but he could see more of them, a whole ceiling, spangled with bright. “Gutta cavat lapidem. Or some shit like that. I got Vulpes mad enough to kill me, Boone.”  
“Like I said. Shoulda done it on the strip.”  
“Maybe.” Maybe was looking more like a yes. He didn’t want to peel back that insect face any more because he was beginning to suspect that there was nothing behind it- or that, if there ever had been, whatever was there was so shrunken, so ugly, such a dog for another man, there was no point in looking. The result was the same. Whatever the make of a man behind that. A human man could still do monstrous things, it was the things that mattered. It was time for him to go.

That wasn’t the true end, the real sum of them. One night he found the frumentarii did drink the drink. Whatever it took to fit in, maybe. Drunken Vulpes found on his proverbial porch.  
“You look like shit without your dog hat,” Bishop said. Everyone but him was at the 38. Steak sizzled on the campfire. The water market glowed like a faint shrine in the distance. Vulpes had just emerged out of the dust like a scary ass fire demon, an apparition of smog and smoke, and worse he crouched by the fire. His eyes burned.  
He really did feel unnerved. “What do you-” want, was how he intended to finish, but Vulpes lifted a hand and touched the side of his face. His fingers seemed particularly hot on Bishop’s cheekbone.  
“If I told you to open your mouth,” Vulpes said. “Would you?”  
A drunk Vulpes had a flat voice. The fumes wafted off him. But not on his breath.  
The fire was warm and hot. There was a pulse in his dick growing harder, louder. Vulpes brought his fingers to Bishop’s lips. Did a man like Vulpes process an act of courage. Could he feel it? He kept his mouth shut. But he kissed Vulpes’s knuckles, instead.  
“An hour,” Vulpes said. “To kiss. Do things with our mouths.” he said.  
“That’s the problem,” Bishop said. “I never know your angle.” Then he said, “Too scared to offer up your ass?”  
He swallowed his hot fingers eventually. That night he had a dream of a dog headed creature sleeping at his side. He got the impression it was a loyal beast, but it had a nasty habit of biting at its own hinds, its own flanks, leaving big scores of red tooth marks on its body. A nasty habit. One thing about Bishop. He knew when it hurt bad in the wrong way.


End file.
